Departures of note

In 1971, Brock Yates, then an editor at Car and Driver, co-conceived and drove in the first Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash, a non-stop, cross-country race from New York to Los Angeles. Yates, his son Brock Jr., and fellow editor Steve Smith made the initial run in a Dodge van dubbed the 'Moon Trash II.' The first competitive race was won by Yates and racing driver Dan Gurney in a Ferrari Daytona, setting a then-record time of 35 hours and 54 minutes. The event, held five times between 1971 and 1979, inspired the 1976 films Cannonball! and The Gumball Rally, and later the 1981 film The Cannonball Run, for which Yates wrote the screenplay.

Yates began his journalism career early, publishing his first articles in Science and Mechanics magazine at age 16. He joined Car and Driver in 1964 as managing editor under David E. Davis, later becoming executive editor. His 1968 critique of the American auto industry, 'The Grosse Pointe Myopians,' established a recurring theme in his work: that American automotive management had become arrogant and disconnected from its markets. He expanded this thesis in his 1983 book, The Decline and Fall of the American Automotive Industry, and followed with The Critical Path (1996), a study of Chrysler's development of its third-generation minivans.

Beyond his writing, Yates worked as a pit reporter for CBS covering NASCAR races in the 1980s and as a commentator for the TNN show American Sports Cavalcade. He also wrote the script for the 1976 documentary Free Wheelin', about conversion vans. In 2006, he was fired from Car and Driver, as he noted, for being 'too expensive.' Yates died on October 5, 2016, from complications of Alzheimer's disease, which he had suffered from since 2007. He was inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 2017.